[Kungfoo]

Yeah, that's all true, but - you're only resource-limiting yourself by buying net throwers (and armored hurlers), which... you just don't need. it's great that they have nets, and that those nets allow them to hit things with their tridents, but their trident damage is entirely superfluous - boulder hurlers have more than enough damage output on their own to clear indies, and only need blockers to hold for a couple of rounds. your starting army can fill this role fine for a number of rounds; ancient ones can do it better longer, especially on a per-resource basis. it's also worth noting that net throwers are mm1. can you expand quickly with prod-2/death 1? yeah, of course you can. you can also expand quickly with sloth 3/growth 3/one extra scale, only you're in a heck of a lot better position in year 3 when your high-resource national troops are near-worthless anyway.

I view sloth-3 as free points for ea-agartha, and I don't feel you've made a compelling case otherwise. I'd also note that while earth readers are wonderful, and *somewhat* synergistic with mf (yeah, you'll be massing them, but only in as many provinces as you're able to build castles in), I'd really rather take points from prod first.